Nero x Nero (Black x Black). Burri and Nunzio.
Curated by Bruno Corà
Milan, Mazzoleni, Via Senato 20
Mazzoleni opens its new exhibition space in Milan with the exhibition Nero x Nero (Black x Black), dedicated to works by Alberto Burri and Nunzio and curated by Bruno Corà, art critic and President of the Burri Foundation in Città di Castello.
In the critical text accompanying the exhibition, Corà recalls that the first work installed by Burri at Palazzo Albizzini was Catrame 1 (1948). In the following years, black became a constant presence in his work, “like the cosmic darkness of an unknown dimension to venture into, Burri’s black is always an elaboration of spaced matter, where form and an equilibrium shared with the ‘caecitas’ of poets still reign.” Black is also the result of a transformative action of fire, as within the Plastiche series, in which Burri pushes the potential of matter to its limits. Choosing the alchemical nature of “…flame as an infernal brush“, as Brandi defined it in his famous 1963 essay, Burri paints with fire and exploits its entire potential, simultaneously destructive and generative.
For Nunzio, fire is equally transformative. “A purifying bath that changes the state of matter and evokes its fossil, the darkness,” he explains. From his earliest works, shadow, night and black have marked his research. Burnt wood and lead, his chosen materials, open a dialectic between permanence and change: wood as night and shadow, lead as light, mutable and reflective. As Corà writes, “What renders Nunzio’s work dialectical with Burri’s is the attention to the qualification of form as an ethical entity that confronts and withdraws from time.”
“What renders Nunzio’s work dialectical with Burri’s is the attention to the qualification of form as an ethical entity that confronts and withdraws from time.”
Alongside wood, Nunzio also uses lead, a material that introduces a further level of tension and complexity. If wood represents shadow and night, lead instead connects to light, to its capacity to continuously transform the perception of the work. The surface of the metal, unstable and changing, reacts differently depending on the incidence of light, making each sculpture an organism in becoming. This dialectic between wood and lead, between combustion and metallic surface, constructs a sculptural language that unites the rigour of matter with its poetic transformation.
